Champion Home: Dancer Lives In A Verdant Paradise

STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. -- Even with the world as her stage, the celebrated dancer, actress and choreographer Marge Champion chooses to call Stockbridge, Mass., home.

The husband-and-wife team of Marge and Gower Champion were legendary in the 1950s for their ballroom dancing in nightclubs, on television and in MGM musicals. They had their own television show in 1957.

Marge Champion has been at home in Stockbridge for 21 years. (She and Gower divorced in 1972, and he died in 1980.) Her first house was nearby, but she sold it after her second husband, director Boris Sagal, died in a helicopter accident while on location in 1981. "After a while, I realized that I really didn't need a seven-room house anymore," she says.

She bought her 1860s Greek Revival home in 1986.

Touring the verdant grounds behind the house, Champion, 82, points out that it is rich in lupine. "It goes where it wants to go," she laughs. She likes to keep the grass long, "because I like to walk on it barefoot and when it's a bit longer, it feels luxurious and soft underfoot."

The house has a pair of rental apartments with their own entrances. She shares a geometrically divided vegetable garden with her two tenants, who plant their own quadrants.

Turning back to face the rear of the house, Champion proudly points out a massive, 275-year-old elm tree. It shades the house without a trace of Dutch elm disease.

Within the wooded property is a series of garden paths that lead to various open garden rooms with natural, lush plantings. The moss-laden flagstone patio is the perfect setting for Champion's wrought-iron dining set. Large trees offer shade on hot sunny days. In spring, billowy hedges of pink peonies provide a blaze of color and fragrance along with lily of the valley.

"I also like to let weeds mix," explained Champion. "I think this is called vetch. Isn't it pretty?" she asks, pointing to a low mound of plants.

Her landscape gardener, Buzz Gray, reclaimed an open green space from a former garbage dump 12 years ago. Champion had a barn moved from the property and transformed the massive stone slabs that surrounded it into two sets of steps that lead up and out of the garden.

She donated the barn to Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, in nearby Becket, Mass., in memory of her son, Blake, who was a dancer. He had lived across the street in the barn's twin, but died in a car accident in 1987 on the way home from a rehearsal at the Pillow. Her other son, Gregg, is a director in California.

In the wooded rise where the barn once stood is a jumbo Adirondack chair, an 80th birthday present from Champion's friend, the actress Carol Channing.

"Carol always gave me credit for taking her to audition for Gower for a Broadway review he was putting together called Lend an Ear, in 1948," Champion recalls.

"I just knew he was going to hire her. He went on to choreograph Hello Dolly for her, and we all became lifelong friends."

The wooden Adirondack chair has become one of Champion's favorite reading places and a vantagepoint for enjoying her private yard.

Champion shares her home with four cats and a dog. She keeps an herb garden close to the kitchen entrance.

Like anyone who buys an old house, Champion fixed the basics first, including putting in all new pipes and a new electrical system. The unexpected was drilling through 200 feet of lime rock for a new well.

The interior was a bit easier to tame.

Her beamed kitchen, which dates to the 1790s, features the original brick fireplace, complete with a swinging iron caldron hook.

Old wideboard flooring pulled up from the attic replaced the existing flooring in the kitchen and living room. (The attic now has a plywood floor.) New custom Colonial-style paneled cupboards frame the stove, sink and counters, while open shelves and a new bay window lighten up the breakfast area.

The old oak table opens to seat 10 people and closes to seat four to six. "Nothing here is collected for a Colonial revival house," said Champion. "So it's all a bit of a mishmash of everything Gower and I ever collected during our 25 years of marriage."

On the wall over the bay window are a series of Disney plates depicting the characters from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 1937, Champion was the figure model for Snow White. Later, she modeled for the blue fairy in Pinocchio and her movements were animated for the dances of the hippopotamus in Fantasia.

A large, green-and-blue floral Venetian glass chandelier illuminates the dining area. "I love this piece because it's so delicate," Champion says. The light and garlands of ivy over the top of each window fit the room's garden motif.

Her eclectic collection includes a large glass vitrine, originally one of a set, filled with primitive Tenogra and terra cotta figurines; a China trade porcelain piece; and a section of driftwood she found while walking on the beach. "I liked it because it looks like a torso," she says. "I love the human body, especially if it has movement, as in dance."

Bookcases flank the living room's wood-burning fireplace. They are filled with more stage and screen memorabilia. Most notable is the shiny Emmy statuette Champion won for creating the dances for the TV movie Queen of the Stardust Ball for CBS in 1975. It starred Maureen Stapleton, another Berkshires resident.

Not one to sit still, Champion, who still performs on Broadway, sits on the executive committee of the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, teaches master classes at Jacob's Pillow and is a member of the advisory board of the Berkshire Theatre Festival.